Current “on line” informational sources, such as on line newspapers and magazines, do not provide a user an easy means to navigate through a mass of information and quickly view a particular item of interest. Further, these sites typically only display the item of interest, and do not provide secondary material that may be related to the item of interest and which the user may be interested in also viewing. For example, if a user wishes to read a particular article, the user “clicks” on the article and only the article is displayed. However, if the user would like to find articles or related information on one aspect of an article, or read additional articles on the same subject, the user typically must type a keyword into a search engine located at the site, which produces a list of articles having the keyword. This is a tedious task, and often requires the user to sift through a long list of articles to determine relevancy.
Another disadvantage of conventional on line publications is that, in order for a user to read an entire publication or sections of a particular publication, the user must select an article and, after finished reading the article, click the back button and select another article. This two click function, if spread across a large volume of reading, is time consuming, particularly because it requires the loading of multiple pages before an entire section or publication can be read. Also, if a user wishes to read multiple publications, the user must access multiple websites, which is also time consuming. Additionally, each websites uses a different navigation method, and such inconsistency between websites is an impediment to reading large volumes of material quickly. Further, tracking a particular interest is difficult to do online, and typically requires a keyword search. Websites offering a tracking feature typically send material on a particular subject to a user's e-mail, thereby often loading the user's inbox with large volumes of information.
Conventional products which attempt to address the above-mentioned disadvantages include RSS feeders and PDF readers. However, the content of RSS feeders depends on what the publisher chooses to put in the feed, and is typically incomplete. Also, such feeders do not allow a user to track interests or to simply conduct a search relating to elements mentioned in a news article. PDF readers require large file downloads and result in images which are often difficult to read because the size of the screen is typically different from the original publication.
Any problems or poor experiences encountered by a user become the same problems and issues for publishers, or more generally content providers, that provide on line newspapers and magazines. These content providers want a positive user experience, by providing web pages that make finding related content easy for the user and make the navigation experience easy and successful (e.g., find content of interest). These content providers want to provide their users an easier and richer experience so that the users will keep returning back to their sites. To create a system that provides such an experience, the content provider has to identify talent within its organization capable of developing the technology to provide this user experience. The content provider also needs to invest in developing its technology and infrastructure to handle these issues and has to deal with storing an ever increasing amount of content and related content available throughout the Internet.